




David Bowie in his hotel room before a performance at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago, 7 October 1972 © Mick Rock

Track 84: Changes (album and single version)
Changes is one of the most iconic and important pop songs of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is also – no matter how much of a cliché such an axiom may have become, and how difficult it may be to refind the radical sense of the song – Bowie’s manifesto. In the first place – this first track of Hunky Dory (which sets the musical landscape of the album) sounds nothing like his previous three albums. David Bowie (1967) was surreal music hall; David Bowie (aka Space Oddity) (1969) was folk rock; and The Man Who Sold the World (1970) was heavy metal. Musically: orchestra, then acoustic guitar, then electric guitar dominated each in turn. Hunky Dory is piano based pop, rock and glam. Lyrically Bowie has moved from character studies, through hippy transcendence then mental illness to an affirmative embrace of the real ambiguities of the world. Bowie – he now knew – was not in search of a style, he was anti-style, his style was to always change and remain fleet of foot. In the second place – the song is personal and untimely. Changes comes late, it is a realization and reflection; but simultaneously an acceptance and affirmation. In the third place – and finally – it is a song that is both philosophical and political. People seem so caught up with the idea of identity, a strong and stable identity, a permanent sense of I, community, tribe, nation, class, race, gender. This is who I am – this is where I belong – these are my people. As Nietzsche said – all this is the primal delusion. Bowie, after Nietzsche, sees the only unchanging aspect of the world being permanent change. So embrace it. Bowie is nomadic. Bowie appropriates. Bowie exploits. Bowie synthesizes. Bowie fakes. Bowie experiments. Bowie plays. Bowie becomes… And Bowie doesn’t deny any of this. Changes was – in the wake of the album release in December 1971 – to be Bowie’s fifteenth single. It was in the shops during January 1972. It was not a hit.
‘Changes’: Track 1 of the Hunky Dory album. Released 17 December 1971. The A Side to the Changes Single. Released 7 January 1972. Written by David Bowie. Available on Hunky Dory (1971).
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